Mind over matter is really a thing, as much of our thinking is unconscious

Q. The unconscious mind is responsible for all sorts of important stuff and is actually more powerful than scientists originally thought. Can you name a few of the activities emanating from this somewhat mysterious entity? A. Current scientific estimates are that some 95% of brain activity is unconscious, says Emma Young in “New Scientist” magazine. These include habits and patterns, automatic body function, creativity, emotions, personality, beliefs and values, cognitive biases, and long-term memory. Moreover, up to 40% of behavior is habitual, taking anywhere from 15 to over 250 days to form a new habit.

With the unconscious such a powerful player, you might wonder if there’s any way to “game” it. Yes, Young says.

1. Feeling lonely? Take a hot bath, since recent research suggests that we unconsciously associate physical warmth with social warmth.

2. Trying to cut back on your food intake? “Spending just a minute imagining that you are full will help you choose a smaller portion.”

3. Needing a little more control in your life? Look around you for signs of visual disorder, since that may trigger bad behavior. Try to “get your house in order,” avoiding clutter, “asymmetry” and “wonky edges.” Q. The following words all derive from stock characters that “have stepped off the stage and walked into the pages of the dictionary where they lie for posterity.” Can you define “alazon,” “eiron,” “punchinello” and “zany”? A. The first two characters from ancient Greek comedy are opposites, says Anu Garg on his “A.Word.A.Day” website. Alazon is arrogant and lacks self-awareness, while Eiron uses self-deprecation and feigned ignorance to triumph over Alazon. These qualities convey their meanings. The Greek “eiron,” for dissembler, gave us the word “irony.”

From Italian puppet shows comes the short, fat buffoon “Punchinello,” whose name refers to a grotesque or absurd person. It ultimately derives from Latin “pullus” (young chicken), since Punchinello’s nose resembles a turkey’s beak.

Finally, you probably know that “zany” means something “amusingly strange, comical or clownish.” It comes from French “zani,” from Italian “zanni,” a nickname for “Giovanni,” from the comedy theater popular in 16th- to 18th-century Italy. A form of “John,” Giovanni was “the generic name of the servant, a stock character who tries to mimic his master, himself a clown.” Q. When nanotechnology partners with the natural world, expect to be amazed. For example, are you familiar with “plant nanobionics”? A. When MIT scientists added carbon nanotubes to spinach plant leaves, the plants emitted infrared light when they were near nitroaromatics, compounds often used in explosives, says Nathaniel Sparping in “Discover” magazine’s “Strange Science,” Fall 2018. The same team earlier had embedded nanoparticles in plant leaves to detect nitric oxide, a pollution indicator, and had developed polymers that bind to hydrogen peroxide, TNT and the neurotoxin sarin. And because plants are sensitive to minute environmental changes, even impending droughts might be detected.

“Everything the plant absorbs cycles through its system,” eventually making its way to the nanotubes in the spinach plants’ leaves. (The same technology could work with any plant.) In the presence of nitroaromatics, for example, the nanotubes triggered near-infrared radiation that was recorded by a nearby camera, which in turn activated a computergenerated email alert warning.

Though there are still “a few kinks to work out,” MIT chemical engineer Michael Strano, co-author of the study, says: “This is a novel demonstration of how we have overcome the plant/human communication barrier.”